Sandy Larch had driven to Bonesta to meet Mrs. Hallard, Unricht’s telephone message having reached the Palo Verde in due season. The cowboys were all out on the range. There was no one about the corrals when Gard reached the rancho. He had not expected that anyone would be, but the place seemed curiously quiet and deserted. A bunch of future polo ponies in one enclosure were the only creatures in sight as he rode on toward the casa. These nickered to his own horse and the sound brought Wing Chang to the door of his adobe kitchen. The Chinaman’s face wrinkled in a genial smile as he recognized Gard. The latter waved a hand to him and turned toward the horse-rail; for he had caught sight of a slender figure under the cottonwoods.
She rose from the low chair in which she had been sitting, reading, and awaited his coming, there beneath the trees. She was dressed, as usual, in white—a soft, clinging serge to-day, for the December afternoons were growing cool—and she stood, serene and quiet, smiling welcome as he approached, but the eyes veiled by her long lashes were like stars. Gard’s heart cried out to her as he took the slim little hand she held out to him in greeting. He felt like a man reprieved. There was no aversion in her look or manner. Westcott could not yet have wholly blackened his good name before her.
“So you have come back to find everybody gone,” Helen said, offering him the long chair he remembered so well. “This seems to belong to you.”
He declined it—his errand was not one that invited the soul to ease—and took, instead, a camp-stool near the little garden table. Patsy, who had been lying beneath it, came to greet the guest, with wagging recognition.
“There’s nobody gone that I came to see,” Gard answered her remark with a directness that brought the long lashes still further over those starry eyes. Helen had seen him coming far on the desert; had recognized him with a quick, exultant leap of the heart, and had schooled herself to serenity, stilling the tumult within long ere he stood before her.
Nevertheless, she was exquisitely aware of his presence; aware too, that the secret fear of her heart, lest memory might after all have played her false with reference to this man, was dispelled. This was indeed the Gard of her musings. Her veiled eyes took swift woman-cognizance of him; of the strength and poise of his spare, supple frame; the clean wholesomeness of his rugged good looks.
Almost before he spoke, however, she was conscious that something vaguely portentous pulsed beneath the quiet of his manner; something which her own mood failed of grasping. He was stirred to the depths by something not wholly of the present moment. The joyous light of that first instant of meeting had faded from his face, and a shadowy trouble lurked deep within his eyes. She raised her own to meet it with the steady, level glance he remembered as peculiarly her own, seeking to answer the need of his soul.
Gard’s courage was near to failing. It came home to him with terrible force as he met her pure glance, what a monstrous thing this was that he had brought to lay before her sweet, untroubled consciousness. He would have given his life to keep sorrow from her; yet he was hungering this moment to tell her his own.
But he could not let her hear it from other lips than his, and he believed that she must inevitably hear the tale very soon. In a flash he saw, too, that if she but believed him that belief would rob the knowledge of its malignant power. The friendliness of her eyes calmed the storm in his spirit. In that instant he loved her supremely; but for the moment she was more the friend to whose soul he longed to lay bare his own, than the woman he loved, whose faith he longed to feel assurance of.
He had no knowledge of the arts of circumlocution. He drew from his pocket a folded paper and began his story where, in his thought, he had meant to end it.
“I have brought you something to keep for me,” he said, opening out the paper and handing it to her.
She looked it over wonderingly. There was a rough sketch of a mountain-range, with one peak indicated by a little cross. At one side was a little map, with directions and distances plainly set out, and half a page of minute instructions as to routes and trails. Gard’s training in the surveyor’s gang had served him in good stead here.
“What is it, precisely?” the girl asked; for complete as it seemed, there was no word to indicate just what it was intended to show.
“That’s what I want to tell you,” was his answer. “It wasn’t best to put too much on the paper. I got taught that the other day; but what is set down there would guide you straight to my gold-mine if ever you wanted to go.”
“Why should I ever want to go?” she asked, on the defensive against his eyes. “Don’t prospectors generally consider it imprudent to show such things as this?”
“Awfully imprudent. You must put it away where it will be very safe, and keep it for me.”
“But why do you wish me to keep it? I think you are rash.” Helen held the paper toward him, but he put her hand back, pleadingly.
“Please keep it for me,” he urged; “I—I wish it above all things. I am afraid—I expect to have to go away for a time, to a place where I could not keep it—for a long time, perhaps.”
“Where do you expect to go?” Helen strove to keep out of her voice the dismay that was in her heart.
“There was a boy, once,” he said, apparently not hearing her question. “He wasn’t a bad boy as boys go, but you couldn’t have called him a good boy, either. And he wasn’t smart, and he wasn’t stupid.” Gard looked out across the desert, considering.
“This boy went away from home the way boys do. He thought it was slow on the farm back in Iowa; and he drifted out to Arizona....”
He paused. He found the story even harder to tell than he had expected. Helen, watching him intently, leaned toward him ever so slightly.
“I want to hear about the boy,” she said, softly, and Gard went on, without looking at her.
“He got out to Arizona and went prospecting. He found a claim, and had it jumped. He got some dust together, and lost it. He lost a good many things; his real name, for one thing, and a lot of other things it does boys good to keep. He was getting into bad ways; getting mighty worthless; and then he got into trouble.”
Gard’s face was pale under its tan, and a white dint showed in either nostril. Helen was studying the sketch of the mountains.
“A man was killed—”
The girl gave a little gasp, and Gard turned to her quickly.
“The boy didn’t do it,” he cried. “Before Heaven! he hadn’t anything to do with it. Miss Anderson—” He bent toward her, eagerly. “Can’t you believe—no matter what comes up—won’t you—oh, you must believe that the boy hadn’t anything to do with it!”
Her eyes were on his face, searching it as though she would read his hidden thoughts.
“I can believe that,” she said at last, “if you say it is true.”
He drew a deep, tremulous breath.
“Tell me exactly what happened,” Helen urged, and the way opened, he went on with the whole pitiful, sordid story, the girl listening, never flinching, though her very lips grew white when he told her what his sentence had been.
He told her of his escape, but omitted mention of his visit to Blue Gulch. He did not bring Westcott’s name in at all, or dwell upon the treachery he had met with. He told of finding Mrs. Hallard’s deed; of his search for her, and of the trouble he had found her in, and Helen’s heart warmed toward him because of what he still did not say; for she recognized Westcott’s share in this matter. He came at last to the lost packet, and the danger that he was in if anyone found it.
“I think somebody has it,” he said, “and that somebody will be getting after me. I am going to try to move first; but may be I sha’ n’t be able to.”
“Do you think it was Mr. Westcott who found those papers?” Helen asked, suddenly, and Gard started.
“Did he say anything to you?” he demanded. “What did he tell you?”
She drew herself up, proudly.
“I am not in Mr. Westcott’s confidence,” she said. “He has never spoken to me on the subject.”
“Sandy and I, we do think that,” Gard admitted. “He, Mr. Westcott, ain’t a friend of mine,” he added, “and if he did find them I’m sure to hear from him before long.”
Helen pondered his words. She knew, in various ways, that Westcott was not friendly to this man. She began now to understand why, and she realized that the attorney could be a venomous foe.
“Any one of the others would have handed the papers over to Sandy, would they not?” she asked, and before Gard could reply turned to answer Jacinta, who was calling anxiously from the house.
“Jacinta thinks it’s getting too cool out here,” she explained, laughingly. “It troubles her if she thinks I am running risks. Shall we go into the house?”
The afternoon was waning. Gard hesitated.
“I must be getting back,” he said, following her, “but I’d like to explain that diagram to you. I want you to have it in case ... if anything should happen, I—want it to be yours. You get your father to have some work done on it, and file the claim right for you. My filing—isn’t legal.”
The words came hard, and the color mounted to his forehead. The girl’s hands were trembling. Outside the sound of men’s voices came vaguely on the afternoon stillness.
“Is it as late as that?” Helen asked, surprised. “Are the men getting back?”
Glancing out of the window they saw Wing Chang coming from the kitchen to the house. Near the kitchen door a man on horseback was waiting.
“Mistlee Glad!” Chang’s yellow visage wore a startled look as he appeared in the doorway of the big living room.
“Man outside,” he said, addressing Gard. “Four, fi’ men; holler; swear; say you come out. Say you gotta come out.”
The man by the kitchen door now rode forward.
“Hey, you, Misher Barker, Gard, whatever you call yourself,” he yelled thickly, “come out ’n that in th’ name o’ law o’ Arizona!”
“Oh!” Helen cried, “what does he want?”
Gard turned to her with agony in his face.
“It’s—what—we—thought—might happen, I guess,” he said.
“Has—has someone come to take you? Don’t go! Don’t let them take you! Oh, surely there is some other way!” The girl’s voice was full of horror. “Oh!” she moaned, “if only my father were here! Or Sandy!” She looked at him with eyes whose revelation almost broke the man down.
“Be you comin’, in there?” the thick voice outside sounded nearer. “They’sh plenty of ush to take you,” it went on. “Y’ ain’t goin’ to hide in there along o’ no girl, Misher murderer!—We’ll take you both ’f you don’t come out ’n be quick ’bout it!”
Gard caught the words and his face grew suddenly stern. He opened the door and stepped outside. The man on horseback swerved, at sight of him, and galloped back a little distance to where his fellows had come up. Gard could still distinguish them all in the increasing dusk.
“Come out here you damned murderer!”
It was Broome’s voice, malignant and thick.
“You’re goin’ git what ’s comin’ to you this time,” he added, tauntingly.
There was no mistaking the menace of the group; Gard realized, as he surveyed it, that this was no posse, but a band of drunken cowboys ripe for any mischief. At all hazards, he must keep them from the house.
“Ride the murderer down!” someone roared, drunkenly. But none of the men moved nearer to attack the motionless figure on the door stone.
Gard was thinking fast, and the burden of his thought was the girl shivering on the other side of the door. He must get these men away. She must not know.
Deliberately he stepped back into the room. As the door closed behind him a bullet buried itself in the upper panel with a savage “ping!” amid a chorus of savage yells. Helen was at the window, ears and eyes strained to the scene without. She came toward him, swiftly.
“You must not go out there!” she cried. “Those men are not officers; they mean harm!”
Her hand touched his arm lightly in terrified appeal. The white womanliness of her upturned face made his heart ache with tenderness. His soul thrilled to a trembling sense of the sweet possibilities of life. Then the instinct of the protector awoke.
“I must go,” he said, speaking low and fast. “I must go now; I must meet these men and—and have it out with them. It is the only way. But I’m coming back. Don’t you worry. I’m coming back clear and clean—”
“Don’t go!” she whispered in terror; for he was moving toward a long French window that opened toward the cottonwoods.
“I must!” His voice was tense with pain. Outside, he knew, death lurked for him—just when life had grown so precious! But more precious still was this slim, white girl. For her sake he must draw the evil crew away from the casa. She must not know!
“Kick in the door! The patron’s away! The coward’s hiding there with—yah!”
A fleeing figure burst from the shelter of the cottonwoods, Gard’s horse still stood at the rail, the bridle reins on the ground. The drunken horsemen turned their own mounts and blundered confusedly against one another as their quarry, with a defiant shout that left them no doubt as to his identity, threw himself upon his horse and dashed away into the gloom. In an instant they rallied from their confusion, and wheeling, were after him.
Gard made for the great rancho gate. He knew the horse he bestrode; knew that it was not in the mongrel brute’s poor power to carry him far, at any speed; but at least he had a start, and was leading his pursuers away from the Palo Verde.
“Head ’im off there!”
“Shoot him!”
“Damn it! Don’t shoot! Catch the damned sneaking dog an’ we’ll string ’im up!” It was Broome’s voice.
The words were borne to Wing Chang’s horrified ears and he raised his own high, falsetto tones, in a cry of warning to Gard. Helen, hovering beside the door, heard also, and rushed out.
“Chang! Chang!” she called, gathering her skirts as she made for the corrals; “come and help me saddle Dickens!”
She seized him by the arm and literally pushed him before her. “Quick!” she cried. “You catch the horse. I’ll get the saddle.”
She must get help. She meant to ride out and meet the men who must soon be returning from the range. She was coming from a shed, bearing saddle and bridle, when Sandy Larch and Mrs. Hallard drove through the great gate. Wing Chang rushed toward them, shrieking.
“Slandy! Slandy man!” he wailed, forgetful of the discipline the foreman was wont to enforce in the matter of his name. “You savee him! Makee dlam hully up! Savee him!”
“What’s eatin’ you?” Sandy roared, struggling with his startled horses. “What’s the matter? Talk straight you fool heathen! Save who?”
“Mistlee Glad! They killee him! Go! Go!”
Wing Chang’s hands beat the air as though he could thus impel the listener forward. Helen now ran up and Mrs. Hallard caught her hand, leaning forward eagerly.
“What is it?” she cried, and the girl explained, in quick, excited sentences.
“We must get out there quick,” she said. She turned with a glad cry: in their preoccupation they had not heard the cowboys, who came galloping in for supper, singing as they rode.
Sandy Larch now comprehended the situation sufficiently to act. He gave a few quick orders, and in a moment half a dozen of the men had faced about and were riding over the desert.
“Round up anything you see,” the foreman shouted after them.
“I’ll be with you in a jerk.”
He meant to leave Helen and Mrs. Hallard at the casa, but they refused to listen to such a plan. Helen sprang into the buckboard, and as the last horseman swept out at the gate the sweating team was in pursuit.
Four of the men rode out upon the plain. Two, of whom Manuel was one, kept to the road, and after these Sandy lashed his horses. He came up with them a mile beyond the gate. Manuel was off his bronco, studying some tracks that just here turned abruptly from the way.
“They must have turned off here,” Sandy said, springing out and straining his eyes to make out the hoof-prints in the baffling gloom. “Gard’s got a poor horse. They headed him off.”
“Oh!” Helen cried, wringing her hands. “Why didn’t he ride back to the rancho?”
“Gard wouldn’t do that, with you alone there,” answered Sandy. “But oh, Lord! Why didn’t some of us turn up sooner?”
Sago Irish, who had ridden out upon the plain, while Manuel studied the hoof-prints, now came back.
“Did you pick up the trail?” the foreman demanded, sharply.
“Sand’s too hard,” he said, sorrowfully, “an’ it’s gettin’ too dark.”
Sandy’s eyes searched the dusky landscape. He was breathing hard.
“Cannot we do something,” Helen pleaded, in a voice of agony.
“If they catch the señor—” Manuel spoke very low, but the women’s straining ears caught the words—“they will ride off where is the little west fork. There they find—”
A word from the foreman hushed his speech. Sandy turned his horses and in an instant they were flying in the direction Manuel had indicated. For the first time Kate Hallard’s nerve was shaken.
“Oh, my God!” she muttered, “Manuel meant they’d find trees!”
As she spoke a revolver shot rang out distantly, upon the air, and with a wild yell the two cowboys dashed off, leaving those in the buckboard to follow.